P.S.M. (Philine) van Overbeeke

Volunteers and paid staff can be alike in many ways, however there is always one important difference: volunteers are not paid wages by the organization. As a result, the relationship between the organization and the volunteer is fundamentally different from the relationship between paid staff and volunteers. These differences are visible in for example the psychological contract, motivation, job attitude, organizational behaviour and created value.

The current discourse about volunteer value mainly focusses on two topics: benefits for the volunteer and cost savings for the volunteer involving organization (the organization where volunteers perform their volunteering tasks). Ample research shows the benefits of volunteering for the person doing it. Multiple ways have been created to calculate the cost saving value of volunteers, so that organizations or countries can show a volunteer’s value and make decisions about hiring paid staff or volunteers for certain positions. However, scant research shows that volunteer can create a lot more value in different ways. For example, volunteers can create value for society. Moreover, organizations benefit in other ways than saving costs from having volunteers as well. Furthermore, beneficiaries see a lot of value in volunteers, and scholars even started to research the value of third-party models showing that both the home (where volunteers are recruited) and host (where volunteers are sent to) organizations benefit from the volunteering activities. In this research proposal I introduce my ideas for a dissertation that aims to contribute to contemporary literature by researching volunteering using a value-based approach as opposed to a cost-saving approach that is used in the literature currently. In my research, I want to focus on the value of volunteers for organizations (home and host) and society as a whole. Though I will touch upon all types of value in exploring this topic further. The broader question I am aiming to answer is: “What is the value of volunteers to organizations and society?”

My first paper will be a conceptual paper regarding value creation in general, focussing on the positive and negative values created by volunteers. The second (qualitative) study dives deeper into the value of volunteers and shows that not everyone can benefit from the individual values, which I claim is undesirable, since the sum of all these individual values is what creates value for society. The study proposes strategies to make volunteering more inclusive, resulting in more value for society and home organizations. In my third (qualitative) paper I will research the value of indirect service volunteers. This study will show that even when volunteers are not in direct contact with their beneficiaries, they do in fact create value for the organization.

The fourth and fifth paper both combine forms of third-party volunteering and involved learning, which are often used to achieve certain goals within the home organization (e.g. learning, development, employee engagement, employee commitment, corporate reputation). In these papers I want to dive deeper in the value volunteers create for their home organization. In the fourth (quantitative) study, I will research a form transformative learning theory combined with corporate volunteering to uncover design decisions for a corporate volunteering programme that positively transforms employees’ world view and thus maximizes value creation. The study will focus on the value of this form of volunteering to the organization and reaching organizational goals. In the fifth (mixed method) paper, I will research Service-Learning programmes and the value the participants create for the higher education institute. I am specifically interested in the value this form of volunteering creates for the home organization and want to examine whether these are similar to those of a corporate volunteering programme.